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Thursday, 10 March 2011

The Clarisonic Facial Brush and a Marketing Dream...

I am a marketer’s delight – the person that advertising agencies dream of. The one they have in mind as they sit around their white boards designing their next campaigns.

Why? Because I believe.

I believe that the latest shampoo/moisturiser/makeup range is the one that I cannot continue to live without; the one that once mine will enhance my life beyond its current dull existence.

Put these ads into a magazine and I believe them even more. A beauty editor’s write up is likely to have me scampering off to the shops, money in hand before I get to the end of the copy. Every year I pore over Instyle magazine’s beauty awards, checking off what I already own and making a mental list to purchase those I have yet to try out.

And whilst I’m old enough and wise enough to know that most claims do not live up to my expectations, I still continue my pursuit for the next miracle product.

So when beauty editors started to rave about a new face brush, I got the familiar urge to buy.

The Clarisonic is a new sonic facial brush that uses the same technology as a toothbrush to give your face a deep clean. It promises smooth, soft, clear skin. Not only that but I am informed that with all of the gunk removed from my delicate pores they will not only shrink into virtual non existence but will allow all of the expensive creams that I own to work much better. Wow! Sounded too good to be true.

The first major downside came with the price. At £155 this is an expensive replacement for a face flannel. But I am assured that the product is worth it. One editor’s husband apparently asking her how she had managed to put her make up on when he had just seen her leave the shower.

Luckily I had some money from my birthday so justifying the price was not a major issue. And anyway, wouldn’t this actually be saving money given that I would never again require a facial?

When the box arrived in the post, it contained some products (cleansers, moisturisers etc) that I immediately consigned to the bin and the brush itself, along with a couple of additional heads. The second downside which I hadn’t considered was that the brush head would need changing every month or so. At around £20 for a replacement head, this was beginning to become very expensive indeed.

The brush itself is quite large – larger than I had anticipated given that it needs to fit into the contours of your face. You can it seems take the outer bristles off to enable the brush to fit more snugly around your nose but to be honest I can’t see myself messing about with that every morning.

The controls are easy to use given that you just press start and the brush starts to rotate. You use it on your forehead first for 20 seconds, then you nose and chin for 20 seconds followed by 10 seconds on each cheek – the brush beeps handily at each interval to let you know when to move on. Irritatingly though all of the controls are on the beep so you need a degree in Morse code to work out what each beep means. At one point, two weeks into use, I thought the brush had broken as it suddenly stopped working. Apparently the increasing number of beeps it had steadily emitted throughout the last few sessions were its way of telling me it needed charging!

The big question is though does it work? Well I can say that if I look really hard my pores are a tiny bit smaller and a couple of people at work have commented that my skin is glowing. I suspect though that this is more to do with following a routine – the brush is too expensive to justify missing a twice daily cleansing session – than the brush itself.

What it does give you is a feeling that your skin is clean as the brush is extremely satisfying to use.Like using its sister the sonic toothbrush you do get the impression that you are getting a really deep clean.

Would I recommend it? If you love gadgets and have £155 to spare then give it a go – there are plenty of rave reviews across the internet to justify a purchase. Personally I think Liz Earle’s cleanser and hot muslin cloth do as good as job.

But I can’t stop, I’ve just heard about a new eye cream that will take 10 years off me…